Wednesday, February 26

"Both the yogi and the shaman do away with their past and the ties that keep them bound to their karmic and family histories. They also learn to break free of time to taste infinity; and in doing so, reach an unconditioned, natural state where they recover their original Self."

- Alberto Villoldo

I dreamed with shaman healers last night and feel a sacred initiation has begun...

Tuesday, February 25

Zen mind is not Zen mind.
That is, if you are attached to Zen mind, then you have a problem, and your way is very narrow.
Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind.
Only keep the question,
"What is the best way of helping other people?"
- Seung Sahn

"Zen is about standing back, letting go - and getting in touch with the peace and wisdom that lies within us all. It's about the discovery of the sacred in the midst of the humble and ordinary. About not getting caught up in the rat-race and the endless search for material possessions.

With its emphasis on looking within, enjoying the moment, detachment and compassion, Zen offers a refreshingly different slant to life. To experience Zen is a bit like looking through the other end of the telescope.

Meditation, as practiced by Buddha, and brought to Japan by the twelfth-century monk Dogen, is at the heart of Zen." - M. Pinkney

Monday, February 24

"What is love? Take a look at a rose. Is it possible for a rose to say, 'I shall offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people?'

...the first quality of love: its indiscriminate character...Contemplate in astonishment the sheer goodness of the rose...for there you have an image of what love is all about.

How does one attain this quality of love? Anything you do will only make it forced, cultivated and therefore phony. There is nothing you can do. But there is something you can drop. Observe the marvelous change that comes over you the moment you stop seeing people as good or bad...To see this is to acquire the indiscriminate quality one so admires in a rose...And here is a second quality of love - it's gratuitousness...it gives and asks for nothing in return...

The third quality of love is its unself-consciousness. Love so enjoys the loving that it is blissfully unaware of itself...The way a rose gives out its fragrance simply because there is nothing else it can do, whether there is someone to enjoy its fragrance or not...Love simply is, it has no object...

The final quality of love is its freedom. The moment coercion or control or conflict enters, love dies...Think for a while of an the coersion and control that you submit to on the part of others when you so anxiously live up to their expectations in order to buy their love and approval or because you fear you will lose them. Each time you submit to this control and this coersion you destroy the capacity to love which is your very nature, for you cannot but do to others what you allow others to do to you. Contemplate, then, all the control and coersion in your life and hopefully this contemplation alone will cause them to drop. The moment they drop, freedom will arise. And freedom is just another word for love." - Anthony De Mello

Saturday, February 22

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." - Agnes de Mille

Wednesday, February 19

"The only beloved who can always be counted on is God. The ultimate partner is a divine one, an experience of ourselves that is totally supportive and forgiving. Until we know this, we keep seeking sustenance from men that they cannot give us. Most men and women today are wounded. The search for some one who isn't in pain is unreasonable until we ourselves are healed of our own dysfunctions. Until then, we will be led to people as wounded as we are in order that we might heal and be healed together. What this means is that NO PARTNER can save us, deliver us, or give meaning to our lives. The source of our salvation, deliverance, and meaning is within us. It is the love we give as much as it is the love we get. The passion we need to feed is our relationship to God. This is ultimately our relationship with ourselves.

It's not as easy as a good date, as much fun as sex, or as dramatic as romantic tension. It is work. Personal growth, recovery, religious practice, spiritual renewal - whatever words we care to use - these are the keys to our return to sanity and peace. When we have reclaimed our wholeness, we are ready to face the worldly beloved. Until then, we will look to a romantic partner to give us peace rather than remember that our role in the relationship is to BRING peace, by receiving it from God allowing him to spread his peace through us to all mankind.

How often I have betrayed myself, forgetting - or more accurately, resisting - the twenty minutes of meditation, the hour of reading, the spiritual meeting or recovery group that would prepare me for the roller coaster ride that always lies potential in an intimate relationship. Part of our problem is that we expect love affairs to always feel good. They don't. Actually, relationships don't feel good anyway. We feel good. Unless we are centered within ourselves, we cannot blame a relationship for throwing us off. No man can convince a woman she's wonderful, but if she already believes she is, his agreement can resonate and bring her joy.

This is our function in each other's lives: to hold the space for each other's beauty, that our beloved can leave us and we still feel in his absence how beautiful we are." - Marianne Williamson

I received this passage after my daily ritual of morning meditation, prayer and yoga just now...and my dear, if the word "god" turns you off, simply substitute it with one that connects you with the Divine Life Force that resides within.

Tuesday, February 18

"At its peak, the "in love" experience is euphoric. We are emotionally obsessed with each other. We go to sleep thinking of each other. When we wake up that person is the first thought on our minds. We long to be together.

The person who is "in love" has the illusion that his beloved is perfect.

We have been led to believe that if we are really in love, it will last forever. We will always have the wonderful feelings that we have at this moment. Nothing could ever come between us. Nothing will ever overcome our love for each other.

Eventually, however, we all descend from the clouds and plant our feet on earth again. Our eyes are opened, and we see the warts of the other person. We recognize that some of his/her personality traits are actually irritating. He/she has the capacity for hurt and anger, perhaps even harsh words and critical judgments. Those little traits that we overlooked when we were in love now become huge mountains.

Welcome to the real world...What happened to the "in love" experience?...The euphoria of the "in love" state gives us the illusion that we have an intimate relationship. We feel that we belong to each other. We believe we can conquer all problems..." - Gary Chapman

so my darlings, how long does the euphoric state of love last?
six months? nine months?
the romantic one year anniversary perhaps?

I have neither answers nor judgment, as every relationship is quite unique. What is essential is a strong foundation of friendship over time, built on mutual trust, respect and a great sense of humor.

Monday, February 17

"A moment of stopping, turning inside, checking yourself out, noticing how you feel, and observing your thoughts without buying into them is a profoundly significant moment. It will give you the power to act from a resourceful, skillful place." - S.Kempton

2013 mixed media on canvas from a series exploring painting as poetry and meditation

Saturday, February 15

"Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.” - Deepak Chopra

Wednesday, February 12

"In our lives, we are many sizes, experiencing ourselves as both large and small. Often a change for the better can cause us to actually feel worse. We doubt our worthiness of the good that has come our way. We temporarily feel small, out of our depth, off-center. Our dreams are coming true and we do not feel large enough to inhabit them. We shrink back in the face of the life we have created. In such times of self-diminishment, I remind myself:

I am the flower of God. My life blossoms through God. The good which comes to me is God's business, not my own. When I allow my life to open and bloom, I am allowing God to find expression in the world."

Tuesday, February 11

"I have no fear of losing you, for you aren't an object of my property, or anyone else's. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine."

Sunday, February 9

"Solitude, says the moon shell. Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment...As far as the search for solitude is concerned, we live in a negative atmosphere as invisible, as all-pervasive, and as enervating as high humidity on an August afternoon. The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone.

How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it - like a secret vice!

Actually these are among the most important times in one's life - when one is alone.

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows she must be alone to create; the writer, to work out her thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as "the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still."

This beautiful image is to my mind the one that women could hold before their eyes. This is an end toward which we could strive - to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations, and activities. Solitude alone is not the answer to this; it is only a step toward it, a mechanical aid, like the "room of one's own" demanded for women, before they could make their place in the world. The problem is not entirely in finding the room of one's own, the time alone, difficult and necessary as this is. The problem is more how to still the soul in the midst of its activities. In fact, the problem is how to feed the soul."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Saturday, February 8

"I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Friday, February 7

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." - my beloved RUMI

Wednesday, February 5

I am a lioness, fiercely protective of those I love. With time I have become more and more intuitive. I pick up subtle energies and thoughts. I often seem to know things before they happen.

Today after my early morning meditation, I received these words of wisdom from Louise L.Hay:

"I allow others to be themselves. I cannot force others to change. I can offer them a positive mental atmosphere where they have the possibility to change if they wish, but I cannot do it for or to other people. Each person is here to work out his or her own lessons, and if I fix it for them, then they will just go and do it again, because they have not worked out what they needed to do for themselves. All I can do is love them, allow them to be who they are, and know that the truth is always within them and that they can change at any moment they want."

Monday, February 3

"When you know who you truly are, there is an abiding alive sense of peace. You could call it joy because that's what joy is: vibrantly alive peace. It is the joy of knowing yourself as the very life essence before life takes on form. That is the joy of Being -- of being who you truly are."

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C A S I M I R A

Brief Bio

CASIMIRA grew up surrounded by art and storytelling with music and poetry playing a part of everyday life. She developed a fascination for textiles and clay since early childhood.

An educational background in art history and romance languages served as inspiration when CASIMIRA began creating poetic wearable pieces from wire, vintage beads and objets trouvés. She has studied in Europe and Latin America and is continuously diving into studio art courses. Private collectors may be found in Europe, Latin America, Australia, Asia, Canada and throughout the United States.

She believes in the healing power of nature, meditates under moonlight and wishes upon stars. She treasures old love letters, dreams of publishing her mountain of journals and of one day living by the sea...

When not painting, sculpting or writing, CASIMIRA is reading, playing with crystals and stones, practicing yoga, volunteering for favorite non-profits and dancing dreams into realities with her best friends and soul mates - her husband and their young children.